Financial software services are diverse and valuable tools, providing services that were either never before available, or were previously available only through interaction with a human professional. For example, a financial software service may provide tax preparation or financial management services. Prior to the advent of financial software services, a user would be required to consult with a tax preparation or financial management professional for services and the user would be limited, and potentially inconvenienced, by the hours during which the professional was available for consultation. Furthermore, the user might be required to travel to the professional's physical location. Beyond the inconveniences of scheduling and travel, the user would also be at the mercy of the professional's education, skill, personality, and varying moods. All of these factors resulted in a user vulnerable to human error and variations in human ability and temperament.
Some financial software systems provide services that human professionals are not capable of providing, and even those financial software systems that provide services that are similar to services that have historically been provided by human professionals offer many benefits, such as: the financial software systems does not have limited working hours, is not geographically limited, and is not subject to human error or variations in human ability or temperament. Although financial software systems represent a potentially flexible, highly accessible, and affordable source of services, they do have significant shortcomings.
For example, traditional financial software systems offering tax return preparation services often present a static, predetermined, and pre-packaged user experience to all users as part of the tax return preparation interview process. This is largely because traditional financial software systems provide user experiences by employing static sets of user experience components, which are typically hard-coded elements of the financial software systems and do not lend themselves to effective or efficient modification, or even re-combination. The static, predetermined, and pre-packaged user experience can easily lead to limitations on user confidence in the abilities of the financial software system.
The problem of users' limited confidence in the abilities of the financial software systems becomes apparent when a user experiences a life event or life change during a tax year. Life events, such as marriage, new dependents, career changes, divorce, and death, can shake a tax filer's confidence in preparing his or her taxes. Because the potential downsides (e.g., owing more taxes, taking more time, etc.) of doing one's own taxes after a life event may feel like they outweigh the potential upsides (e.g., filing the return correctly), users who experience a new life event strongly question their ability to prepare their returns without assistance.
The lack of confidence that users have for financial software systems is only amplified when users receive irrelevant questions, information, or other user experiences. In traditional financial software system, the user experience elements presented to a user are pre-determined based on a generic user model that is, in fact and by design, not accurately representative of any “real world” user. It is therefore not surprising that many users, if not all users, of traditional financial software system find the user experience to be, at best, impersonal. In fact, users of traditional tax preparation financial software systems may find the interview experience unnecessarily frustrating and unpleasant. Clearly, this is not the type of impression that results in happy, loyal, repeat customers.
What is needed is a method and system for providing a personalized user experience in a tax return preparation system based on predicted life events for a user, according to one embodiment.